Baltimore photographer captures the city's colorful doors

Baltimore resident Izzie Arrizza has an eye for finding colorful and unusual doors along the street of Charm City. She captures them on her IPhone and shares them on her Bmore_AdoorableInstagram account. Izzie shares some of her thoughts about her passion for photography.

How would you describe your photographic skill level? Amateur. I am 100% self-taught, with no formal training.

What kind of camera do you use to take the door pix? iPhone? I currently only use an iPhone. I have had digital cameras in the past but all of my door photos and personal account photos were taken on an iPhone 7 or 8 Plus. I use Photoshop Express for editing.

What made you start taking the door pictures? I made the difficult decision to not become an M.D., but instead began a career in Clinical Research. This change in my career path allowed me to still generate financial stability while stimulating my analytical side and insatiable need to learn. However, it also granted me the free time to ultimately pursue songwriting, as well as spare time for traveling, photography, creating art, and other things I am passionate about.

In the last several years, I felt a force keeping me in Baltimore. Yet, I decided early on that I wasn’t going to resent the inability to leave as frequently but rather grow where I was planted. By taking the time to explore my own hometown, I ended up falling in love with it. Sure, it’s rough around the edges but I truly began to understand the meaning behind “Charm City”. I wanted others to see the charm that I saw and Bmore Adoorable was just one of those avenues.

Izzie Arrizza / The Baltimore Sun

Hampden Bike Silhouette Ð Bonus Double Door located in the residential area of Hampden on Beech Ave.

Hampden Bike Silhouette Ð Bonus Double Door located in the residential area of Hampden on Beech Ave. (Izzie Arrizza / The Baltimore Sun)

There was one particular street/alley across from Eddie’s grocery store that I would walk down daily on my commute and would marvel at the cool doors on that block. I took photos to show a couple of my friends. Then I started taking pics of more and more cool doors that would catch my eye. Before you know it I had way too many door pics sitting on my phone than I knew what to do with. This is when I decided to create a place to display my strange obsession. This was when the IG account was born. To this day you can still see my love of street art incorporated into my collection of door photos.

Do you search them out or just shoot them if something catches your eye? I really have never gone out of my way to search for doors, rather I would snap anything that caught my eye. At this point my eyes seemed to be trained to look at doors before anything... Kind of the same way that when you buy a new car you see it everywhere. I suppose the trained eye comes from awareness. I often have other people tell me the same; whether friends, family or followers of Bmore_Adoorable, I frequently have people send me doors photos or hints to locations all the time now. The awareness has spread.

Izzie Arrizza

Izzie Arrizza

How did you come by the name bmore_adoorable? Well, of course I wanted to include Bmore! The place where I reside and love dearly. Second, I was trying to be clever. When I was trying to come up with a name I must’ve said "Bmore Door...” out loud slowly. It sounded like I was saying “Bmore Adore”. The rest just flowed out.

I find it amusing that something I started out of pure love & fascination, with barely any effort, grew into something much larger than I initially anticipated for it to. As Dionne-Joyner Weems (former VP of Marketing for the City) has said (with regards to all local influencers of #Mybmore), it is one piece helping in part to change the narrative of Baltimore. It just goes to show: whenever you nurture the seeds you have planted, they will grow & bloom in time. I hope this account inspires others to do just that, starting with taking pride in the city where they reside.